Precision in Motion: Reactive and Anticipatory Control of Mouse Tongue Movement for Interception

The ability to perform high-precision motor actions to intercept moving objects is fundamental to animal motor behavior, whereby organisms must constantly adapt to a dynamic environment. Such interception tasks rely on tightly integrating predictive internal models and moment-to-moment sensory feedback, a hallmark of complex sensorimotor transformations. Studying interception behavior thus offers a unique window into how the brain flexibly coordinates perception and action in real time. However, traditional behavioral paradigms to study sensorimotor control in head-fixed mice, often rooted in classical conditioning, simplify these complex processes into predictable, rigid stimulus-response routines. Consequently, these paradigms fail to capture key ethological features of interception, such as the continuous dynamic nature of sensory input and direct physical interaction with moving objects. Our task bridges this gap by integrating naturalistic elements of interceptive behavior with precise experimental control. We introduce a behavioral task in which head-fixed mice use their tongue to intercept a food pellet moving at constant speeds, randomly changing from trial to trial. We describe details of the 3D kinematics of discrete tongue-reaching movements, their distinctive motor phases, and their learning-dependent changes in onset and kinematics. We show that mice adjust their tongue kinematics and movement onset relative to varying pellet speeds, using distinctive reactive and anticipatory strategies. We demonstrate that the anticipatory strategy partially depends on vision and intact lateral cerebellar circuits. Our novel behavioral paradigm is a valuable tool for exploring the neural basis of sensory-motor transformation during object interception in head-fixed mice. Significance StatementIn natural environments, interception requires seamless sensory-motor transformation, yet traditional paradigms like classical conditioning and virtual reality fall short of capturing this complex behavior. We introduce a behavioral paradigm where trained mice intercept food pellets moving at constant speeds, which vary randomly across trials, with discrete tongue licks. Remarkably, mice employ dual motor strategies, reactive and anticipatory, adaptively tuning the distance of lick initiation and the projection speed of these tongue-reaching movements in a learning-dependent manner. This work establishes a simplified interception-like framework for studying sensorimotor dynamics in head-fixed mice.